YouSaid · the spoken record

Clara Shih

lines on the record: 37
first: 2020-07-28
most recent: 2020-07-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Masters of Scale is a whitewater original. The show is recorded remotely with sanitized audio gear. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Our producers are Chris McLeod, Adam Skus, Jenny Cataldo, Jordan McLeod, Catherine Clark Gray, Halle Bondi, Christina Gonzalez, and Ben Manila. Our editor-at-large is Bob Saffian. Original music and sound design by Ryan Holliday and Daniel Nissenbaum. Audio editing by Keith J. Nelson. Mixing and mastering by Brian Pugh. Special thanks to Chris Ye, Elisa Schreiber, David Sanford, Saida Sepieva, Adam Heiner, Emily McManus, Kelsey Capitano, Tim Cronin, Sarah Sandman, Charlie Maness, and Colin Howarth. Visit Masterscale.com to find a transcript for this episode. Be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“May be the secret to looking at must-haves versus nice to haves, essentials versus amenities, urgent versus important, is to develop a new phrase. Perhaps what you really want to be is more like a pair of glasses, perfectly suited to your customer in a way they can make their own. You help them see ahead clearly and help them understand the fine print. They'll always need you, and they may just love you too. I'm Reid Hoffman. Thank you for listening.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right there in that last piece of insight, that is what I mean by being a vitamin and a painkiller. Clara is talking about solving their customers' current problems, but also helping them write their wish lists. Let's look at what Killer app Clara sees on the horizon, the one that might be a nice to have today, but a must have tomorrow.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cultivating an environment that values honest feedback. That's one vitamin, if you will, that builds a healthy culture. Another one is creating clarity about how you define success.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love the insight that comes out of the story because it's such a good example of a CEO and a trusted colleague doing exactly what they're supposed to do. Just as companies create painkillers for customers, they need to take care of their own house as well. Because today's vitamin deficiencies become tomorrow's illnesses. Clara listened to her colleague when he came to her with honest feedback, and that prevented a feeling of disconnect from becoming a systemic rupture. She integrated this idea of honest feedback into their company culture.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“CEOs are often encouraged to focus only on the problems that are urgently hurting the business, like revenue loss or customer attrition. A feeling of sadness might not seem urgent, but in truth it's only not urgent for now. The head of a company that feels disconnected from the body is a problem that will manifest down the road.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That focus on one type of customer allowed her company to scale fast. So it took a little while for Claire to realize something else might be wrong”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Making changes to your company's mission can feel less like taking a vitamin and more like invasive surgery. But if the surgery is necessary, it must be done. You don't skip a major operation because you're worried the stitches will hurt.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Comedy might seem like a nice add on, but it's actually the ingredient that makes the whole thing work. A traffic school is only as good as it is effective, and comedy is what makes the lesson stick. Humor is the vitamin to the driving school's painkiller. When we left Clara, she had just found the way to make hearsay a vitamin and a painkiller. They had jettisoned their consumer business and went all in on enterprise clients, specifically financial institutions who valiance products they built. But anytime you fully commit to a new path, one that's both vitamin and painkiller, or fire extinguisher and fire door, you're going to shut out some customers. For hearsay to successfully pivot from public facing to enterprise, they might need to leave some customers behind.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gary pitched the owner of the improv, the legendary Bud Friedman, on a partnership that would hire the club's funny people to teach safe driving courses.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Gary and his partners knew that, so they hatched an idea that would make this medicine go down smoother. Their courses would be taught by improv artists and comedians.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Traffic school itself has long been something of a punchline, something you do anything to get out of. But for thousands of drivers each year skipping out isn't an option”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For 25 years Gary's online defensive driving school has been proven to reduce future collisions. Its secret is in the name My Improv. com That sounds like a place to hone your SNL audition material, not your three point turns. But Gary thought comedy was exactly what driving school needed.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Notice how Clara pivoted hearsay toward being a painkiller for enterprise clients, but she didn't actually give up the vitamin. Their product still offers the future-facing social tools that make sales easier and more efficient. And it's this formula being a vitamin and a painkiller that's magic. To make that concept a bit clear, I thought we'd take a look at a business design around meeting one of the most urgent and painful needs out there. Adult driving school You know, the place you sent after you have an accident.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Claire and her team would find a way to be both a painkiller and a vitamin. They started filling a role for enterprise that was essential and immediate, a must have in classic Silicon Valley parlance, but must have versus nice to have isn't a simple binary. Instead of serving individuals despite their employers, hearsay started working with their employers. The banks and insurance companies who'd been sending those letters. Hearsay built their tools in a way that helped the institutions stay industry compliant, and the agents through their employers got the same future-proofing tools as before and then some.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there it is, the phrase we've been teasing throughout the show. Is your business a vitamin or a painkiller? Here's how that typically plays out in the proverbial Silicon Valley sense.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You may know this because you know some of the PayPal crew, but one of the funniest things that I was in the room for when I was on the board before I joined the company full-time was the whole idea was mobile cash payments. Then all of a sudden all these eBay people started using it. And the discussion for the first week at PayPal was we got to get these eBay people off. This isn't the design. It was meant to be mobile payments and all the rest. And of course nobody was using it for mobile payments. The eBay takeoff curve was a fast ramp takeoff curve. And then all of a sudden it's like, no, no, no. These are our customers.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In solving their customers' pain points, hearsay ran headlong in a one of their own compliance. For all the financial managers listening, you know how many rules there are governing individual agents' behavior on social platforms. There are certain things they can't say to prospects or the run afoul of the FDIC, the SEC, and other regulatory bodies. There are rules on what messages they send on the bank's behalf, what device they use, how they phrase a new offer. In short, every time individual agents used hearsay on their own, they opened up their financial institution to liability. It seemed like hearsay would have to drop them as customers.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before the break, Clara Shy and her brand new company, hearsay, were getting ceased and desist letters on behalf of sales reps who were using their social selling platform.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What caused that cease and desist order will find out. Listeners, Bob, here, if you listen to rapid response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the rapid response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from the Devilware's Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hearsay offered a range of social selling tools. It was an extension of what Face Force had set out to do, make it easier for salespeople to use their social media connections to personalize content for clients and prospects.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shelley decided she could live with it. So she left IBM and went on to an impressive executive career. And that brings us back to Clara, who left Salesforce, yes, during the financial crisis. She approached an old classmate, Steve Garridy, about building a new startup based on the idea behind Face Force.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A junior executive, Shelley didn't see a viable path forward to our ultimate goal of becoming CEO. So she checked back with her own risk assessment strategy.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When companies look at their products, they ask, Is this a painkiller solving my customers' immediate urgent problems? Or is this a vitamin setting them up for a better future down the road? Well, that's true when we look at our own choices too. Like Clara, Shelley was faced with a bracing decision about whether to leave a company she'd put years into. In Shelley's case, the company was IBM.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's Shelley Archambeau, former CEO of Metric Stream. You've heard Shelley on this show and on rapid response too. Shelley is one of the Tech World's first African American female CEOs. Her upcoming book, Unapologetically Ambitious, is about taking risks on your own terms.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a moment shared by every startup founder. The moment you decide to leave safety behind and jump off the proverbial cliff. It's exciting, but often painful too, and our willingness to take the leap may depend on our tolerance for risk. As Claire weighs that decision, I thought we take a detour to consider how you make that decision. Should you take the risk? Here's how one of our previous guests approaches it.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That book became The Facebook Era, which had on the cover an old school Rolodex whose pages are Facebook profiles. As someone who remembers using an actual Rolodex, that illustration rings very true, although this obviously raises reasonable questions about which Facebook data shouldn't be part of a company's Rolodex. Clara's book led to more public talks and appearances and eventually to striking out on her own.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's fair to say Face Force was ahead of its time, and it pointed Clara toward the problem she wanted to solve. How can salespeople use these new emerging social platforms to both gather touch points from customers and improve future offerings to those same customers? And that's what Clara wanted to do more of, not just put out today's fires, but build tomorrow's fireproof doors.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you didn't quite catch that, we'll break it down. If you're a sales associate, you work hard to keep your customer files up to date. Every time someone moves or gets married, you put it in the file, but one of Facebook's oldest features is the status update. When someone changes their status from single to married, all their friends get the word in an instant. So, every time your customer updates their Facebook status, they're updating your Rolodex for you.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And probably the most relevant part, because obviously there's a whole bunch of things learned into Google and Salesforce, but you are one of the folks trying to connect Salesforce to the new social world. It was 2007. And at this point, MySpace was the most visited social networking site in the world. Facebook was just making the transition from colleges to mainstream. Public perception placed a brick wall between personal platforms like MySpace or Facebook and the professional like LinkedIn. However, in Silicon Valley, it was still an open question whether there was a role for enterprise on Facebook's pages. That's when Clara took her programming skills and some open source code and proposed an answer to that question. So you had this idea for an app, Face Force, so tell us a little bit about how the idea came about.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Without a safety net at home, Claire looked for every opportunity to build her credentials. She was named a Mayfield Fellow, which is a program for future CEOs, and she became a martial scholar, which, as it happens, I did too. After graduation, Clara headed to Google, where she learned a lot about the intersection of content and advertisement.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But despite her parents having advanced degrees, the fact they were from universities in Hong Kong meant it was hard to find work.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Find out what Clara is referring to a little later in this episode. But first, let's borrow that time machine from the top of the show.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Play at the top The Nice to Halves of Yesterday often become the must-haves of today. I wanted to talk to Clara Shy about this because as co founder and CEO of Hearsay Systems, she has found success laying what a customer needs with what they might want down the road. She got me thinking about the old vitamin painkiller metaphor by using it.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is Masters of Scale I'm Reed Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner Greylock, and your host, and I believe you should strive to make your business a vitamin and a painkiller. Solve your customer's urgent needs while anticipating their future desires, and you'll add rocket fuel to your scale. There's a common saying in Silicon Valley Some products are vitamins and some are painkillers. Be a painkiller. Meaning you're either something customers like, but don't desperately need a vitamin, or you're something they need acutely, like it or not, a painkiller. It's not my favorite metaphor. For one, it paints a picture of customers as addicts. But I also don't think it has to be either or. Products that serve an urgent need and also offer vitamin like prevention or soul filling delight will go farther than ones that focus only on need. And as we saw in our little radio.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hope you enjoyed this episode of Masters of Scale Theater. If you're wondering why we took you on a quick trip to the nineties, here's why in that little cafe, Internet Access for Customers was considered a perk, not a necessity, but today it's non-negotiable. Companies often strive to deliver the thing their customers most urgently need, and let go of the things they just kind of like. There's an expression for this. It says, be a painkiller, not a vitamin. But I don't think it has to be either or. As we saw in our little radio play, the nice to haves of yesterday become the must haves of today. That's why I believe you should strive to make your business a vitamin and a painkiller. Solve your customers' urgent needs while anticipating their future desires, and you'll add rocket fuel to your scale.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome to our midsummer episode of Masters of Scale. This episode will be joining Clara Shy, CEO of Hearsay, but first we'll celebrate this midsummer moment with our annual episode of Masters of Scale Theater. This one is titled The Time Traveling Mailbox. Will shatter the bounds of the fourth dimension in pursuit of our ever elusive theories on scale. And yes, we're traveling in a mailbox because it's midsummer and my producers find that funny.”
2020-07-28 · Masters of Scale · Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT